Search engine optimization, aka SEO, is a critical digital marketing service. You might not already know the service or lack in-depth knowledge, preventing you from understanding the full benefits of SEO. In truth, in the digital-focused area, SEO is the pinnacle of digital marketing and can be the difference between growing your business and losing revenue.
Activate Digital is a specialist SEO agency in Liverpool with years of experience helping various clients boost their visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. As experts in this area of digital marketing, they’ve provided some input on what SEO is and why businesses should utilize it.
What is SEO?
A summary of SEO is that it helps position your website in front of potential customers. When a person is looking for something, what do they usually do? In most cases, they turn to search engines like Google and Bing. Search engines are powerful tools storing billions of data to help users find solutions to their queries. For instance, a tourist entering a new city may look to Google to discover things to do in that city. Therefore, it’s in a company’s best interests to make its brand present when potential customers seek what they offer. This is where search engine optimization comes in.
Search engine platforms use several factors to determine their search results and where websites should appear. Ultimately, they want to display the most relevant and trustworthy results for the user’s query. Most people click one of the first five results, so it’s vital to get your website as high as possible. Factors that can influence a website’s position include on-page optimization, creating high-quality blog posts, and building authoritative backlinks, to name just a few. SEO is when businesses use these ranking factors to optimize their website accordingly. Firstly, SEO involves keyword research, discovering relevant queries that potential customers may search for. With a list of keywords, you can then plan a strategy for how to optimize your website for each query.
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Why Businesses Need SEO
Essentially, SEO is a cost-effective way to attract new customers to your brand. SEO is organic growth, so you don’t need to pay huge advertising fees to reach your audience. Organic search is a huge source of a website’s traffic, and in many cases, it will be the primary source. Google is the largest platform with a market share of 92% and only Bing is the closest rival at 2%. Google also happens to be the most visited website on the internet, so it’s clear Google is a powerful way to reach customers.
SEO is all about increasing your visibility to a local and international audience. Organic search creates highly relevant traffic as people who click through to the website will be interested in what you’re promoting. In comparison, traditional advertising can be expensive just to reach a broad audience that may not be keen on your products or services. With organic search, you know people are looking for a solution you offer at this very moment in time. When someone visits your website, you can use engaging and appealing designs to help them convert. Other digital marketing tactics, such as re-marketing, can be useful to guide them through the customer journey.
SEO is not just about taking actions to influence how Google judges your website and where it should be positioned on its platform. SEO will help you develop a marketing strategy that places your customers at the forefront. Google itself advises businesses to build websites for users, not search engines. With SEO, you will develop a customer-friendly mindset that means clean and effective user experiences, fast-performing websites, and platforms built to improve conversions. Similar to this, SEO will help you identify who your customers are, what they want, and how you can help them.
Competition can be an exciting and powerful motivation for businesses. The SEO market is very competitive as the core aim is to beat similar websites. SEO helps you push your business further by presenting an opportunity to find out where your competitors are lacking and ways you can overtake them for certain search queries. You don’t need a budget of thousands of pounds to win. When you overtake a competitor, it can be highly rewarding.
Ultimately, SEO is a cost-effective and necessary way to attract new customers for your business. This is an evolving and ever-changing service that will develop your mindset to create user-friendly experiences and build trust with your potential customers. SEO will keep you on your toes and help you contentiously discover new opportunities for growth, including finding new keyword opportunities and refining the customer journey.
